Hillary Supporters Can Now ‘Be Public’ on Facebook

They have names like “Wise Women for Clinton,” “Cool People for Hillary,” “Bros 4 Hillary — #GiveEmHill” and one that rhymes with witch.

Some are small, with just a couple of hundred members, while others number into the thousands. All of them began as a “secret” — or, as secret as one can be with an invite-only Facebook group.

The groups are “safe spaces,” members say: a way to discuss policy and celebrate good news without having to defend; a place to bring up doubts about their candidate — What’s the deal with the emails? What about her changing stance on gay marriage? — and work through them together with a nuance not typically afforded on the internet.

In some, members strategize about how to respond to criticisms, keeping spreadsheets of articles that correspond with each.

Should any members decide to “come out” — that is, post publicly on their Facebook feed outside the group — they could do so knowing that they had an army of defenders, ready with “likes,” emoji and articles to back them up.

“It’s like a secret society,” said Ashley Kreamer, 37, a film editor in Brooklyn, who is a member of two such groups on Facebook. “A secret society of Hillary Clinton supporters.”

For most of 2016, to be a vocal supporter of Mrs. Clinton — in certain circles of Bernie Sanders-supporting progressives, anyway — was to be the square in the Lacoste shirt cast to the corner of the hipster prom.

“I was yelled at when I wore my Hillary shirt to a grocery store in West Hollywood, possibly the most ‘accepting’ neighborhood in the whole world,” said Kate Hess, a 38-year-old producer in Los Angeles.

Danielle Thomson, 34, a writer in New York, said: “The first time I posted about Hillary, I couldn’t even function for 24 hours. I kept refreshing my feed — sweating.”

And if you were young and for Hillary? Forget about it.

“I’m treated like a traitor to my generation,” said 22-year-old Patrick Ross, a playwright in Philadelphia.

And those were just the people you knew in real life. Online, the vitriol was worse. Moderating comments on a single Facebook post was like “a master class in nonviolent communication,” said Lori White, 33, a writer at Upworthy and a founder of “Cool People for Hillary.”

Strangers commented on your feed. Trolls spammed your wall with threats, called you “a warmonger, a corporate whore,” and many terms reserved for female supporters that were far worse, said Laura Bogart, a writer in Baltimore.

Older supporters were not immune either. Robert Stanton, a 53-year-old actor, had a friendship severed after he “liked” a photo of Mrs. Clinton and Courtney Love on Facebook. His former friend told him “he couldn’t be friends with someone for whom he had no respect, which was quite a blow,” Mr. Stanton said.

Martha Harrison, 24, a medical student at New York University, said she was “pretty sure” a guy she was dating “broke up with me over my Clinton support.”

“I’m all for lively debate,” said 32-year-old Andrea Gabbidon-Levene, a program manager at a community college, “but this was something else.”

For many Clinton supporters, a result was a kind of shrinking: answering when asked, but never volunteering their support. Calling yourself “anti-Trump” instead of pro-Hillary, as Brandt Hamilton, 23, did. Buying Clinton swag but never wearing it. Dutifully picking up an “I’m With Her” bumper sticker at the local Democratic headquarters but never actually sticking it on your car.

“As opinionated as I am about movies, TV shows and the yoga world, I learned to be quiet during this primary season, ” said María Cristina Jiménez, 43, a yoga instructor in Los Angeles. “I decided it wasn’t worth it. So I hid, with millions of others, in plain sight.”

Luckily for her, there was a Facebook group willing to welcome her: “Bitches for Hillary,” which has nearly 5,000 members, its name a play on a Tina Fey quote, “Bitches get stuff done,” which went viral during the 2008 primary.

There, members like Ms. Jiménez could geek out over Mrs. Clinton’s Wellesley speech, discuss her record on gun control, and ask how best to respond to attacks about her war record. The shared memes, photos and their favorite Hillary gear.

The group’s guidelines included “don’t be a butthead” (“If you need to disagree, focus on the substance of the argument, not the person making it”) and a nod to the complexity of the word “bitch,” which they say that — for purposes of the group — they treat “as a badge of honor and pride.”

“We were tired of having to deal with Bernie splainers and Hillary haters,” said Natalie Miller, 38, a yoga instructor outside of Washington who founded the group with a friend, an English professor.

Ms. Thomson, the New York writer who labored over her first public Facebook post, said: “I’d liken it to how, centuries ago, women made quilts to express their political beliefs in a way that wouldn’t ruffle any feathers. My secret group was an email chain — which is, you know, clearly the ‘quilt’ of our modern times.”

When Mrs. Clinton clinched the nomination last week, the journalist Ezra Klein suggested that she had relied on the “traditionally female” approach to politics: creating coalitions, finding common ground, winning over allies behind the scenes.

It was perhaps not so dissimilar, said the Democratic political consultant Will Robinson, to what many of these secret groups were doing. From the outside, it may have seemed that there was more enthusiasm for Mr. Sanders than Mrs. Clinton — his supporters saturating your Facebook feed — but Mrs. Clinton’s supporters were there as well, albeit not shouting.

“I think sometimes being silent and not participating in the social media fights can be a form of sincere self-care,” said Tanya Tarr, 38, a health coach and former political organizer. “I don’t want to waste my energy fighting or getting upset — I would rather quietly organize or go about my business getting my candidate elected.”

Mrs. Clinton is not there yet, but as she took the stage at the Brooklyn Navy Yard last Tuesday, group members said they noticed an outpouring of public support that wasn’t there just days before.

“I volunteer at local Democratic HQ, and after the nomination, we had a bunch of women walk in and say: ‘Is it safe now? I want to volunteer,’” said Clio Tarazi, 61, a retired urban planner in California. “One woman broke into tears. It was all the same sort of feeling, I think, of wanting to be comforted, of wanting to know that it was ‘O.K.’ to be public now.”

Mr. Stanton, the actor, said: “After Hillary clinched the nomination, I made my first public post about her. It felt good.”